Five Blessings will perform “Bun Fun New Year,” the first episode of their audio play series A Year of Blessings—about traditional and contemporary celebrations of Chinese holidays made for young audiences. The performance is approximately 30 minutes and includes original songs and a dance that the audience can participate in.
After the performance there will be a short presentation by the Chinese Canadian Museum on the history and traditions of Lunar New Year, and how it is celebrated by different communities in Vancouver to this day.
Short activities will follow the presentation. Attendees can put on temporary tattoos and colour in colouring pages based on the characters from the play.
Date: January 18, 2025
Time: 1:00pm and 3:00pm
Tickets: Free, but registration is required.
For general inquiries regarding this event, please contact the Programming Department here.
About the performers:
Amanda Sum (she/her) is a performer and creator who dances between theatre and music. Amanda has collaborated on many interdisciplinary theatre based works, which have brought her to perform and present works at the Smush Gallery (Jersey City), On The Boards (Seattle), Fury Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theatre (San Francisco), and Summerworks (Toronto). As an actor, Amanda’s recent credits include four seasons of the East Van Panto (Theatre Replacement) and Sense and Sensibility (The Arts Club). Amanda’s debut indie-pop album, New Age Attitudes, was released in the Fall of 2022. Her music video, Different Than Before (directed by Mayumi Yoshida), was JUNO-Nominated for Music Video of the Year, and won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award (2023). As Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER Artist, Amanda created New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert. Part pop-up book, part performance, this experimental theatre piece premiered in the spring of 2023 and is touring this year. Amanda holds a BFA from SFU.
Aidan Chan is a multifaceted performing artist from Vancouver, BC. Through film, music and theatre, Aidan hopes to bring people closer to their inner nature and enjoys expressing his art through as many disciplines and outlets as possible. His personal work includes making documentary film. He recently worked with the Reel Asian Film Festival, where he produced his first short, Homewater.
Nancy Tam was born and raised in Hong Kong but now works and lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice is collaborative and often models a devised theatrical creation process. Her current research triangulates between sound, space and body to investigate notions of horizontality and peripherality in the context of immersive spatial and sonic designs. Nancy has a penchant toward listening to quiet sounds and observing quotidian performances. Her work is form-bending and dramaturgically rigorous. In 2023, Nancy was a featured artist at Prague Quadrennial for the Canadian exhibition.
Derek Chan (陳嘉昊) grew up in colonial Hong Kong and currently lives and works on the unceded, stolen, and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, colonially known as Vancouver. An award-winning multilingual playwright, director, translator and performer, he is the Managing Artistic Director of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. Derek was an artist in residence at the National Arts Centre English Theatre Department in the 2019/20 season. He was the co-recipient of the 2021 Simon Fraser University FCAT Young Alumni Award for his work at rice & beans theatre.
Christopher Lam (林子榮) is a Chinese Canadian director/actor who is based on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver. He is the co-artistic director of Ensemble Theatre Company and recipient of the Jean Gascon Award and the Ray Michal Award for outstanding body of work by a director. He is a graduate of Douglas College and Langham Director’s Workshop. He was part of the inaugural cohort of the Bachelor of Performing Arts Program from Capilano University and is pursing his MFA in Directing at UBC.
